Delete a business

Q: Delete a business

You can delete a business from Ledger › Setup › Businesses : press the bin icon on its card. The business you have open (your default) has no bin icon; make another business active first if you want to delete this one. A business with nothing in it If nothing has been recorded in it, there is one qu

You can delete a business from Ledger › Setup › Businesses: press the bin icon on its card. The business you have open (your default) has no bin icon; make another business active first if you want to delete this one.

A business with nothing in it

If nothing has been recorded in it, there is one question, Delete business or Keep it, and it is gone straight away. Nothing is lost. Any mailbox that was assigned to it stays connected.

A business with records

1. Keep a copy

Before anything is deleted you are offered a complete copy of the business, as one .zip file you or your accountant can open anywhere. It holds:

import files for QuickBooks Online, QuickBooks Desktop and Xero, including every journal entry, so nothing has to be typed in again;
reports for every year as PDF and spreadsheet: profit and loss, balance sheet, trial balance, general ledger, what customers owe and what you owe, and sales tax, plus the accountant's handover files and each GST/HST period;
every bill, receipt, bank statement and invoice stored for it;
a raw copy of every record, one spreadsheet per kind of record.

Sign-in links, sharing links and connection keys are written as [redacted] in the raw copy, so the file can never be used to open your mailbox, bank feed, store or customer portal.

Choose Keep it on TALISK_HQ for 90 days, Download it to this computer, or both. A copy you only download is kept for 72 hours, so download it as soon as it is ready. Skip, I don't need a copy asks you once more first: the CRA expects a business to keep its records for six years.

2. Wait for the copy

A business with years of records can take several minutes. You can close the window: we email you when the copy is ready, and it is listed under Ledger › Setup › Archives. Nothing is deleted until you confirm.

3. Confirm

The confirm step tells you the date the business will be erased. Type the business's name, then press Delete business. From that moment:

the business is locked and hidden from every screen and from the business switcher;
bank feeds, store syncs, scheduled report packs and invoice scanning for it stop, and nobody you shared it with can open it;
your mailboxes stay connected, and so does each mailbox's AI training. When the business is erased they are simply no longer assigned to it.

If the business changed after the copy was made, the confirm step offers Rebuild the copy, so the copy holds everything.

Erase immediately instead

Erase immediately instead skips the 7-day window. It asks for your password, your two-step code if two-step verification is on, and for you to type ERASE. It cannot be undone. If a copy is still being prepared, the erase waits for it to finish.

Restore a business

A business waiting to be erased is listed under Scheduled for deletion at the bottom of Ledger › Setup › Businesses, with the date it will be erased. Press Restore and it comes back exactly as it was, with every record, and its bank feeds, store syncs and report packs start again. Once erasing has begun, it can no longer be restored.